flute musicfrom the templewe cannot enter |
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winter wavesbringing fresh moonstonesto the beach |
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first meeting youa flight of balloonsabove the summer river |
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moon viewingwine from Sloveniafills my cup |
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a bench in shadeold folks plottingtheir next moves |
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no comet just the plain stars tonight |
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stream of antsrunning madlyin both directions |
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relaxedknowing I get offat the last stop |
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Veterans Daya parade with more marchersthan viewers |
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just before dawnone last ornamentall the difference |
All poems copyright by Patrick Gallagher. They may not be used for any purpose without explicit permission.
A number of these poems have been published in Mariposa, Raw Nervz, and the Two Autumns Press publications A Path to the Sea and If I Met Basho.
Yuki Teikei Haiku Society 
Nice selection. This is just a great, great feature of the “new” Youngleaves.com website. Congratulations.
A haiku is 5-7-5 syllables, shuold include a season-word’, and the third line shuold act as a counterpoint to the first two.Your second line is 8 syllables (if I’m counting right), and there is (of course) no seasonal word but I really love the turn of events the third line describes. It makes me a bit sad and melancholy, like all good haiku.
Rashir, are you speaking about a poem in Patrick Gallagher’s set? I find no second line with eight syllables . . . English language haiku continue to respect the 5-7-5 structure, and the use of kigo; every year haiku of real accomplishment are written with these features. However, English language haiku over the past fifty years has also developed a resilient and adaptable poetics that results in poems having widely diverse rhythms, structures, and imagery that does not always include kigo, but other, highly-associative phrases and single words that evoke meaning beyond the scope of the traditional kigo of Japan.